Roald: The games that are successful as esports titles definitely always have the red line of a strong community there, and most of the ones that have great success have a strong focus on grassroots. Take Counter-Strike as an example; the longevity of the game would have never happened without esports, and esports would have never happened if the game didn’t cater to grassroots communities. I think what we have also seen is that games that have been built to


solely be a competitive (esports) title, launching with grand esports tournaments (huge prize pools, franchised leagues), more often than not fail, because they are organizing competitions for a player base that doesn’t exist yet and often live of short-lived borrowed viewership/ fandom of players who briefly come over from other games (and once they’ve cashed in their prizes, return to their “original” game). Those who carefully build up their community from the ground up,


and then added esports as a top layer, an aspirational goal, are the ones who have massively extended their game’s lifecycle and player retention. To build that community, it’s not a one-solution fix. You can’t just build an esports ecosystem and expect success. Different players interact in different ways, so you need to communicate and approach it from many different angles but also with a holistic overview of how the different activities work together. I’m not a massive League of Legends player, so I was never drawn into


the Riot universe too much. But as Arcane came out, I enjoyed it a lot, and I wanted to interact at a deeper level; so I watched Worlds and VCT. I picked up TFT and played Valorant again. So while their esports activations didn’t capture me, their content did, and in turn I became an active player.


Wouter: You’re right that gaming culture and innovation is to a large extent driven by the community. During my time at Fnatic and GIANTX, despite being very recognisable names in esports, we assumed it took 3 years to have established your presence and be accepted in a new game and community. It took Nike a generation to get themselves into skateboarding. You don’t just come in and step into someone else’s court. You’ve got to join, participate, contribute, and earn your credibility.


Wouter: What is the biggest mistake you’ve seen studios or game developers make when going to market? Roald: It happens quite often. It’s the thought that if you have a great game that players will come. 99 out of 100 times this is not the case and you will need active community building and marketing to succeed, and the sooner in your development you begin, the bigger your chances of success.


Roald: Do you think community building has been deprioritised when launching a game? Wouter: It has for a few reasons, but essentially because gaming is ‘big business’ more than ever. That in itself is not a bad thing but it did result in a few things. The focus has gone more and more into short-term consumption tactics and metrics There’s a growing tendency of ‘fail-fast’ culture that has crept in. That serves some, but not the participating community. Some of the biggest games have gone through multiple


iterations before they were a hit, and on more than a few occasions, it was because of involving the community. With more stakeholders, there’s simply less time for a studio to spend time on its biggest stakeholder: the community. With more at stake, studios become more protective.


Wouter: What’s your recommended approach when it comes to building community? Roald: The earlier you begin your community building, the better. Easy, low-hanging fruit is streaming your development, sharing clips on socials and Discord. All this can be done from Day 1 and brings players along on the whole journey, and gives that essence of belonging.


Wouter: What moment in your career made you realize that community was more than just a buzzword, it could shape the future of game marketing? Roald: It really clicked early on at FACEIT for me. The platform started with Quake Live, which is a community that has deep-rooted habits and culture due to its long standing history, so it’s not always easy to come in as a “newcomer”. And initially there was a lot of resistance and on anything we’d say we saw a lot of trolling and negativity. But as we continued to have an open dialogue and showed that the


players that did give us serious feedback, we would implement that and authentically engage with them. Slowly the current seemed to change, the trolls got downvoted and any mistakes we would make were more easily forgiven. Tournament participation numbers and viewership kept growing and soon we saw numbers beyond what we had even dared to hope. This was a big moment of realization for me that if you work with the


community, be authentic and open with your communication, you will only see benefits.


Wouter: I’ve always been awed by the level of passion and willingness by gamers to contribute. I will always remember when at Fnatic’s Bunkr in Shoreditch, a colleague (Henry Hoang; now at Capcom) organised a Street Fighter community competition event. We said ‘yes sure, use it for the weekend’ and didn’t give it any further


thought. Henry organised the event and the turn-out was amazing, the venue filled to the brim. People travelled across borders. You don’t need much direction if you’re all sharing the same purpose, you just need some people to orchestrate it and the rest to participate.


Wouter: What would you say is the biggest value that ELO can bring to game developers? Roald: The biggest value we bring is our ability to design and execute long-term strategies that grow with your game and leverage the strengths of your game, from pre-launch to years after. We combine storytelling, player experiences, user orchestrated content and culture to create engagement that’s authentic, not performative. We’ve built communities from scratch, scaled them globally, and


understand the fine line between marketing and building genuine connection. We craft experiences and shape relevancy.


June/July 2025 MCV/DEVELOP | 19


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